


To Circumvent Fate

by alpha_exodus



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Anal Sex, Falling In Love, First Time, M/M, Meta, Multi, Polyamory, umm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 09:38:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7886014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpha_exodus/pseuds/alpha_exodus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Later on, when Johnson tries to pinpoint what went wrong, he finds that it all can be traced back to two big mistakes. The first had been falling in love with Eric Bittle. The second had been underestimating Kent Parson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Circumvent Fate

**Author's Note:**

> Me: *writes BittyJohnson* That means I'm done, right? I can stop now?  
> Johnson: No. No you can't. Please write more of my narrative.  
> Me: .....ohhhhkay fine since you asked so nicely
> 
> aka this is a multi-pairing, johnson-centric but also pb&j (pb&jj?) containing mess that will be updated whenever my muse (Johnson) deigns it so. please enjoy. <3 (also on [tumblr](http://omgpbandj.tumblr.com/post/149562112577/to-circumvent-fate-pt-i)!)

Later on, when Johnson tries to pinpoint what went wrong, he finds that it all can be traced back to two big mistakes.

The first had been falling in love with Eric Bittle.

The second had been underestimating Kent Parson.

He’s not entirely sure how avoidable his first mistake had been; there had been alarm bells ringing in his head from the get-go, but he’d ignored them all. Once his emotions had gained traction, had accumulated momentum, there was no going back.

As a result, he’d crashed and burned. But then, his Feelings had warned him, hadn’t they?

The second mistake—well. Turns out love is a much stronger force than Johnson had ever expected.

But Johnson has never been one for discontinuity, so he’s going to start at the beginning.

The first time Johnson becomes aware of himself, he’s standing at the entrance of the Haus along with all of the other frogs. At this point in time he very strongly knows three things: one, that he has a job to do, and that job is to keep things going exactly as they should be. Two, that there is someone very, very important to him that will be standing in this exact spot in three years. And three, that Johnson is Not Important.

Huh. He’s non-essential. The only Important thing about him is that he’s here to keep an eye on things, and otherwise nothing else matters. Shit, that kinda sucks.

As he’s trailing through the Haus, trying his best to get his bearings even though the Feelings are everywhere, images piling themselves on top of the present, a blur of blond hair that may or may not be important and the strange, out-of-place smell of cinnamon. He has to work hard to answer the question someone asks him—he manages a ‘yes’ and has a beer plopped in his hand. Personally, he thinks that this is surreal enough without adding alcohol to the mix, but he knows instinctively that he has to seem at least somewhat normal within the realm of the narrative. He cracks the top open and takes a sip.

He wonders if all of these Feelings are normal. His instincts tell him ‘no’. Just to be sure, he turns to the guy next to him. “Anyone else feel like they’re new to this storyline?”

The guy looks at him, shaking his head, and all at once Johnson knows many things: his nickname is Cribs. He’s a left-wing. He’s even Less Important than Johnson himself is, but he also has a girlfriend and a couple friends on the rugby team and even aspirations for the future.

Dimly, Johnson wonders—why isn’t _Johnson_ allowed all of these things? The answer comes to him immediately: it would obstruct the narrative. He needs to remain a blank canvas, just another cog, spinning things in the right direction.

He realizes he’s a little sad about that, so he takes another sip of his beer.

xXx

It gets easier, being around the Haus. Slowly, Johnson starts to be able to see through all of the echoes of the future, and as he gets more and more present, things start to make sense. He’s the goalie. Sometimes he has to block goals, and sometimes he has to let them through—it’s important to stay at the correct ranking, although when Johnson tries to focus on why, it’s still a little hazy. He’ll find out later, he thinks.

Occasionally his Feelings tell him Not to do things. He listens. Strangely, he’s allowed to talk about his Feelings as long as he doesn’t spoil too much of the plot. It’s the closest thing to a character trait he has at this point, so he embraces it, and eventually all of the guys know to turn to him when they’re in the mood for a laugh.

Funny. Johnson can be funny. He likes being humorous, likes putting smiles on other people’s faces, and something in him swells. He looks up jokes online, crafts a repertoire of interesting anecdotes—he kind of appreciates having such a blank background in that regard, because he can easily weaves stories about the parents and older brother that he’s dimly aware exist. Theoretically, that is. He’s never met them.

He’s telling a girl in his class a story he’d read on the internet, adding details that make it into his own, when something funny clicks in his chest.

He momentarily panics—what the fuck was that? But it didn’t feel _bad_ —just different. He thinks about it as he walks back to his dorm, investigating the Feeling—and he knows it was a Feeling. It had that aura about it.

Eventually he comes to the realization that he had just changed fate.

It hadn’t been a bad change—not a large enough change to stop any of the events that need to be set in motion. He’d grown a personality where one hadn’t been before, where one perhaps hadn’t been meant to exist, and that had been enough to shift fate just a tiny notch. That’s not so bad. But it’s not good, either. It scares him so much that he resolves to try his best not to do it again.

A few weeks later, he wakes up knowing that he absolutely must befriend his teammate Shaker. And so he does, sitting a little nearer to him at lunch and purposefully making jokes that he knows Shaker will laugh at. “Aiming for dibs?” Shaker raises an eyebrow at him, as Johnson picks up both he and Shaker’s trays at lunch.

“Huh. Yeah, I suppose I am,” Johnson says, and Shaker laughs and pats him on the back as he stands.

Things go on in kind of a blur for a while. Johnson’s extremely grateful that he doesn’t have to hide his ability to know things; he thinks he would burst from holding the secret in his chest. He has to hide what exactly he knows, of course, but that’s not quite so bad. After all, time loops aren’t something he has any desire to fuck with.

His first Kegster is a mess. That one night has more echoes than the previous two weeks combined—there’s more bodies than should be possible packed onto the dance floor, and when Johnson tries to use the bathroom, there’s someone throwing up in the toilet even though it had been distinctly empty a few moments before. Even the upstairs isn’t safe—there are people flickering in and out, talking in the hallway, flashes of quiet conversation with words that are too garbled to understand. Johnson feels a little overwhelmed, so he heads outside and sits on the front porch. It’s the quietest place he can find given that he doesn’t think he’s supposed to leave yet.

Shaker finds him out there half an hour later, stepping out into the cool fall air behind some giggling girls who are leaving the party. “Hey, bro, what’s up?”

Johnson sits up a little straighter—ah, so this is why he’s out here. He knows what dibs means, knows that he’s destined to live in the Haus starting next year, and it’s looking like it’ll be Shaker’s room that he’ll be living in. This is another one of those talks, probably. A friendly thing.

Johnson’s been nursing a beer for most of the party, so he’s in the middle of trying to decide whether he should act drunker than he actually is when Shaker sits down next to him. “Relax, man. You don’t have to think so hard.”

Johnson huffs a laugh. “You don’t know half of it,” he says wrily.

“And I’ll never learn, is that right, Johnny boy?” Shaker nudges him with an elbow, and Johnson grins at him easily, something like happiness blooming across his chest.

He’s done the right thing, he’s made friends with Shaker—he’s succeeding at his job, isn’t he?

But as he’s looking at Shaker, staring into light brown eyes framed by dirty blond hair, his Feelings click in his chest.

Oh, fuck. Fuck. He’d been doing everything right! What had he done to change fate this time?

Slowly, he lets out his breath. It hadn’t been a _bad_ click; just like the first one, it doesn’t seem like this will change much. Maybe he’d gone overboard trying to make friends with Shaker? He doesn’t know.

And it really sucks, to learn that he can do his job _too_ well. He’s going to have to watch himself carefully from now on, because even when things seem like they’re working out perfectly, he can never truly tell until he feels the click in his chest.

“Hey. John,” Shaker says, and he’s the only one that calls him John even though his first name and his last name are basically the same. (He kind of wishes that his name had been more creative, but because he’s Not Important, it doesn’t really seem to matter.) “Remember when I asked you if you were aiming for dibs?”

“Yeah, of course,” Johnson says. “Why?”

Shaker’s expression is soft. “I’m kinda wondering if I jumped the gun on that.”

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about, bro,” Johnson says, because the way Shaker’s looking at him is making something funny twist in his gut. Not a Feeling, just regular emotions for once.

“Shit,” Shaker sighs, looking away. “Never mind—you’re probably not into dudes anyway.”

All at once, Johnson realizes what Shaker had wanted. With _him_ , with _Johnson_ —and Johnson feels kind of exhilarated. “I’ve never really had to think about liking dudes,” he admits. “But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t fit within the realm of the narrative.”

Shaker looks at him again, raising his eyebrows and huffing a laugh. “You’re a weird guy, John.”

Johnson doesn’t get a chance to respond before Shaker leans in and kisses him, lips soft and the taste of beer on his breath. It’s warm and electrifying and not something he’d expected at all, which is saying something. Johnson briefly pulls away, sets down his own mostly empty beer can and leans in again so that they’re properly making out, and Shaker’s tongue is down his throat and Johnson’s feeling brave enough to put his hand on Shaker’s thigh and wow, fuck, he’d never anticipated that this would feel so _good_.

His first kiss, he thinks. His first anything.

Shaker pulls away, panting. “Wanna come up?”

Johnson searches his Feelings but doesn’t find anything in particular—this must be what the fate shift had been. So then he considers his regular emotions, and he finds that yes, he really, really wants to go up—“Yeah,” he nods quickly, and Shaker cracks a grin, pressing a kiss to his forehead.

“Mind if we go up separately? I don’t really want the other guys to find out—you don’t mind, right?” Shaker looks worried.

Johnson feels a pang of something isn’t entirely pleasant, but he nods anyway. He waits five minutes before climbing up the stairs and looking across the doors. He knows immediately which one it is, because there’s the ghost of a short blond head standing there for a split second. Johnson walks over and knocks on the door.

Shaker pulls him into the room, shutting it behind him and shoving him up against it. Johnson lets out a groan as Shaker kisses him because it’s so good having Shaker’s body pressed all up and down his own, Shaker’s thigh brushing deliberately against his crotch. Fuck, Johnson is hard. He’s been hard before, has jerked off before, but that had been more of a physiological response than anything like _this_.

Shaker kisses his jawbone, then the patch of skin in front of his ear. “You’ve never been fucked then, right?”

“No,” Johnson breathes, and then he chokes out a gasp because Shaker’s pressing his palm against Johnson’s dick and it feels so fucking good.

“Wanna?” Shaker raises an eyebrow, and Johnson’s never thought about this before, but he likes Shaker and Shaker is making him feel good and so he nods and says yes.

Shaker motions him over to the bed, pulling his own shirt off as he fumbles at a rickety nightstand drawer. Johnson fingers the hem of his own shirt, watching Shaker tear off a condom from a line of them. “Shaker—should I take my clothes off?”

“Yeah, that’d be good. And uh, you can call me Sam,” Shaker—Sam—grins at him, and Johnson feels something easy and warm unfolding in his chest.

“Sam,” he grins, and Sam’s eyes roll back in his head.

“Ah, fuck. Yeah, please get naked,” Sam nearly growls, fumbling at his own zip.

Johnson takes his eyes off of him to start getting undressed, and it’s when he does that he sees them.

The echoes.

They’re everywhere. Walking all over the floor, sitting, laying on the bed, leaning over the desk to reach for something, and it’s all that blond head he’s seen before, so many iterations of him that it’s almost overwhelming. Johnson stumbles over to the bed, shirt off and pants halfway down to his ankles—he kicks those off, boxers too, and then he has to sit there with his eyes closed for a good moment before his mind will settle.

There’s no one in the room except he and Sam, he reminds himself.

“Hey. You all right?” Sam sits next to him, looking concerned.

“I’m fine,” Johnson says. “It’s just—a lot.”

“We don’t have to do this,” Sam squeezes his thigh. “We can just like, I dunno. Blow each other or something.”

Oh. Sam thinks he’s talking about the sex. Johnson swallows and doesn’t deny it, because he doesn’t want to ruin this moment with his weirdness, and looks over at him. “I want—whatever you want,” he says carefully, and Sam grins at him.

“Let me know if we need to stop, okay?” Sam says, and then he’s pressing him to the bed and kissing him.

Johnson ends up on his stomach, panting, face against the pillow as Sam slides thick fingers in and out of him. It feels strange and good and also makes him feel terribly vulnerable. He wonders if he’d let anyone else do this besides Sam. Probably no one he knows at this point in time.

“You ready?” Sam asks him, pulling his fingers away, and Johnson whines at the loss.

“Yes,” he says, even though he isn’t quite sure—but the idea of having Sam’s dick inside him sounds really good, so he pushes his hips up in the air so Sam can line up, push himself in—

“Aww _fuck_ , John. Goddamnit that’s good,” Sam groans.

Johnson groans too, but that’s kind of because it hurts, because Sam is bigger than he’d expected and he needs time—he chokes out a gasp, focusing on breathing.

“Hey. Hey. Bro, talk to me,” Sam says. “You need me to stop?”

“No,” Johnson lies, but Sam stops moving anyway and Johnson is grateful for it.

The next time Sam moves, it feels better. “Touch yourself,” Sam mumbles into his back, and Johnson does, holding himself up on one arm while he strokes himself to hardness.

Sam starts fucking him in earnest, and Johnson can’t help moaning—“ _Oh_ ,” he shudders, squeezing his eyes shut.

When he opens his eyes again, there’s a blond head of hair on the pillow in front of him. The face is contorted into a gasp, and this is the clearest picture Johnson’s ever seen of him, fuck—this is him. This is the person important to him.

And then Johnson hears the ghost of a whimper and he comes with a low whine, spurting out over the sheets, clenching around Sam because he can’t help it. Sam’s hips stutter against Johnson’s, and then Sam’s groaning too, wrapping his arms around Johnson as his dick pulses inside of him.

Afterwards, when Sam pulls out, Johnson feels sensitive and raw, both in his body and in his emotions.

He gets dressed quietly. “I’m sorry you have to leave,” Sam says.

Johnson’s sorry too. “I understand,” he says anyway. “They aren’t supposed to know you like boys in this universe.”

Sam gives Johnson a breathy laugh and a kiss on the cheek before he leaves.

xXx

They fuck whenever they get the chance to do it without anyone noticing. Sometimes Johnson sees the blond guy next to him when he comes, Sam hard inside him, and Johnson feels a little bit guilty afterwards even though there’s not much he can do about it.

Family weekend comes and goes. Johnson gets a text from his mother saying that they can’t make it; Johnson understands. He’s a little disappointed. He’d wanted to meet them.

He stays on campus over Thanksgiving break, but he’s not allowed to do that over winter. He’s not sure what will happen, but he packs his bags up when Sam does the same anyway.

It turns out that Johnson simply doesn’t exist over winter break. How strange. He goes to sleep the night before he’d been meant to leave, and when he wakes up, he’s standing in his dorm room, listening to other guys shouting about what they got for Christmas in the hallway.

Halfway through spring semester, Sam meets Sophie.

Sam tries to let him down gently, and so Johnson takes it as lightly as he can, even though his heart feels like it’s crumpling inside his chest. He makes it back to his dorm before he realizes he’s crying.

Fuck. He’d known that the chances of staying with Sam within the narrative were low, but he hadn’t expected it to hurt so much.

Afterwards, he sees Sam giving him sad little looks when no one else is looking. Johnson tries very hard not to stare at how Sam’s arm is around Sophie’s waist at the next Kegster.

xXx

“Hi, John,” Sam greets him. “You doing okay?”

“The story’s going,” Johnson nods, because that’s about as okay as it gets.

“I’m really sorry, you know,” Sam says. He doesn’t sit next to Johnson on the porch.

“I know,” Johnson says, and then he has to look away or risk feeling emotional again.

Sam sighs. “Hey,” he says, and then he extends his hand out to Johnson. Johnson takes it, shaking it, trying not to show that he’s trembling—he knows that hand. That hand has been all over his body, has been _inside_ him, and now—“You’ve got my dibs. You’ve always had them, you know?”

Johnson’s never felt so miserable at achieving an objective.

Time will heal this, he thinks. And it does. By the time he goes to graduation with the rest of the crew, he feels okay enough to give Sam a last hug before he leaves.

And then Johnson heads to his new room, the one with all the echoes in it, and ceases to exist for the summer.


End file.
